Towards Maturity: Excellence in Leadership Development: Energising Leaders Through Technology Tools

Towards Maturity, with the support of KPMG, compiled the Excellence in Leadership Development report to provide evidence to help organisations understand the role of technology in leadership development and how to improve the impact of learning innovation.


The report looked at the progress made since their first report Reinventing Leadership Development, to consider what is driving change in leadership development, the benefits that are being delivered by adopting new approaches, the barriers to learning innovation and the actions L&D are taking to address the challenges they face.

The report draws its' findings from three main sources of data:

  • In-depth interviews with innovative leaders in L&D responsible for leadership development, including:
  • A detailed online survey of 125 L&D leaders who are responsible for delivering leadership development programmes
  • Direct insights from a sample of over 2,000 leaders and managers


Some of the main points identified within the report include:

  • Leaders as self-directed learners
  • Data from 2,000 leaders and managers highlights that whilst 40% find their classroom experiences essential or very useful in helping them do their job, they are also strong self-directed learners.
  • L&D have high aspirations of their leadership development programmes
  • Almost all L&D professionals are looking for their programmes to improve the bottom-line impact on business, their ability to get the right talent in place and the process of supporting talent, however, whilst many report some progress, few are consistently achieving their expectations.
  • Technology is being used with varying success to support leadership development
  • 25% of overall L&D budget is allocated to leadership development, with 14% allocated to learning technologies
  • The top drivers for using technology to help them share good practice, adapt learning to context and reduce time away from the business (reported by 96%) but fewer than half are achieving this.
  • the top barrier to change is the lack of knowledge about how technology can be used in leadership development (reported by 68% of L&D professionals).
  • Context is critical for busy leaders yet the majority of L&D leaders are not embracing new models of learning that can support contextual learning
  • Despite high expectations for leadership development programmes, few are actually tracking progress


You can download the full report here.